A little less than one year ago, I called the OnePlus One "the best flagship phone you can't buy" in my initial review. The phone had some impressive hardware at an amazing price, and in many ways it still does, but the system of invitations and qualifications built around actually buying the One made obtaining the device an exercise in frustration. It's taken them eleven months (and what seems like dozens of separate promotions and half-measures), but you can finally order a OnePlus One without an invitation of any kind starting today.

The announcement was made on the OnePlus website, forum, and Facebook page. There's a big red "buy" button on the main store, and both the 16GB white and 64GB black versions ($299 and $349, respectively) are currently in stock. You don't have to wait until Tuesday, you don't have to beg the official Twitter accounts, you don't have to spend time sucking up on the forums. You can exchange your legal tender directly for an electronic device. What a novel idea. OnePlus is offering discounts on various accessories to celebrate.

Of course if OnePlus had done this a little earlier, the company might have earned a little less scorn from frustrated would-be buyers. Most of the promotions for the last few months have simply focused on limited direct sales, and the less said about some of the company's ill-advised social media activities, the better. It doesn't help that a reliable report from Bloomberg is already drumming up interest for two new OnePlus devices to be released later this year, though whether or not those phones will be offered for direct sale isn't known.

One more thing: a scheduled over-the-air update for the One has been put on hold so that the company can implement a new feature. OnePlus co-founder Carl Pei had this to say on Twitter:

OTA rollout was paused due to new "OK OnePlus" feature being added. Should resume mid week.

Pei later clarified that this is specifically for the recently-released CyanogenMod 12S, not the company's in-house Oxygen OS. "Okay OnePlus" is almost certainly a voice activation feature similar to "OK Google," which is now built into the Google search application - Pei even told Twitter followers that "it will work even when the screen is off." From context, it sounds like the voice activation may simply replace the "OK Google" phrase and activate the search function. It's basically just a bit of vocal branding. Those who currently have CyanogenMod 12S will receive an OTA update to enable the feature, and presumably it will come to Oxygen OS eventually.

Comments

ADDENDUM:
I can bet you have never touched an OPO, and ridiculous as the invite system might have been, the phone is absolutely fantastic EVEN TODAY, at that price point.

dfd

No, I haven't. The company won't get any of my money. Never settle... lol. I don't know why you're white knighting for them in every comment here.

Doakie

He's trying to counter the stupid hater mentality that people have towards something they've never tried.

Matthew Fry

At the time it was released, I decided I wasn't going to jump through their hoops for the opportunity to give them money. It wasn't an interesting campaign, it was a dumb campaign. By the time it was available in one of their short periods of normal sales, I had moved on to salivate over a different device. I am fully aware that I'm an idiot yelling "woo woo" on the hype train but I'm not getting excited over a 1 year old device no matter the quality to value ratio.

Lol, two comments, because there are plenty like you skepticisms out here, talking non-facts. Device old, LOLNO. Device invite system stupid, yes. But again, device old, LOLNO.

Maxr1998

You're right. I would have bought it and would buy it still if I wasn't happy with my Nexus 4!

By the way, the OPO is like a Nexus phone without being One. And it's not only about the AOSP-ish rom.

TJ

Seriously. It took me just 10 minutes to find an invite when I decided to buy one. People are really lazy these days :/

The device is totally bad-ass. One of the best touchscreens (in terms of the smooth feeling of touch) I've ever come across. Waiting for OnePlus Two ;)

erptastic

Well, but I guess some people rather spend ten minutes searching for a pre-owned known flagship phone from their country in mint condition which does more for the same price than searching around for an invite for a device that has to be shipped from China first...

Srsly, OnePlus was a disaster so far. Sure, the Phone was really nice back then, but they really fucked up their potential to be an likeable/dev-friendly/cool alternative to the big companies.
Instead they messed up from second one with their stupid "destroy your $600 phone to get a $300 one" campain. Then the invite system. Then the CM disaster. Now, a year later when nobody really cares about the phone anymore and it's due for being replaced, is definitely to late for "Saying farewell to invites"

AuroraFlux

"OnePlus was a disaster".

Yup, unanimously loved by all the reviewers, tons of sales, many satisfied people, and a sequel to the phone coming up soon. Totally a disaster man. Totally.

erptastic

Well, any reviewer complained about the invites and about the destroy campaign. And a sequel of the phone coming up soon speaks for the phone, not the company.

Thats why I said OnePlus was a disaster and not the OnePlus One. It did get its fans because it is a nice phone. But the Marketing was a total fail. They could have positioned themselves as the Robin Hood of Smartphone makers and made a LOT more money and image than they have now. But no, they did Bullshit from start to end, the latest being even trying to sell no invites as something they can be proud of... Now it is just another phone by another weird chinese manufacturer...

AuroraFlux

> Well, any reviewer complained about the invites and about the destroy campaign.

And look how little it mattered. No one even remembers the campaign except bitter people (possibly like you). As far as the phone itself goes, the reviewers unanimously loved it. The most darling tech reviewer on the internet (MKBHD) even loved it enough to make it his permanent phone.

> Thats why I said OnePlus was a disaster and not the OnePlus One.

They are one in the same. They make one phone. Stop personifying companies with human-like traits. It dosn't make sense.

> It did get its fans because it is a nice phone.

Which is the goddamn point behind a phone company, to make a nice enough phone that people will buy it.

> But the Marketing was a total fail.

No, the marketing was a smash hit success. Every single person was talking about it. Even non-tech people knew about it. You're confusing marketing with...something else, I don't know. HTC has a marketing problem. OnePlus absolutely did not.

> They could have positioned themselves as the Robin Hood of Smartphone makers and made a LOT more money and image than they have now.

How noble of you to care about how much money OnePlus makes. What a compassionate human being you must be. (Remember what I said about personifying a company?) If they care about money and they cared about image, they wouldn't be selling such an insane phone for so little. If one is to see past their marketing and hype speak, one could assume they are genuinely trying to make a breakthrough in what we consider "flagship" phones.

> But no, they did Bullshit from start to end,

No one denies that they made mistakes. The smash campaign was weird, the ladies first was downright idiotic, and the invite system was definitely a point of frustration. I'm not giving them a free pass on that, not in the slightest.

> the latest being even trying to sell no invites as something they can be proud of...

They've explained a million times to people like you why they had invites. Where they started from. What opening the floodgates could do to them. I'd much rather have an invite then wait in line forever, wondering when my card will be charged, or be told (hey you can buy them now they're in stock) and watch them vanish in 15 seconds like every single Nexus Google Play Store launch ever. They made tons of money, and they can finally afford to produce excess stock and fulfill orders for people who want them without waiting. That is something for any up and coming company to be "proud" of, but again, your problem (like many others) is you keep seeing marketing slogans and promotional material, and using that, you keep personifying the company like it's a person. It's not a person. It doesn't have feelings, it doesn't have intentions.

> Now it is just another phone by another weird chinese manufacturer...

No, now it's just a 64 GB well made 5.5" 1080p Snapdragon 801 2.5GHz smartphone, with 3 GB of RAM, LTE, a 13 MP Sony camera, front facing wide angle 5 MP camera, 3,100 mAH battery, and full open source, including warranty support for unlocked bootloaders, and all of that for just $350.

Please don't delude yourself. That's it was when it came out, and that's what it still is. I have no doubt that this post will be skipped and I'll just be branded as a biased OPO fanboy, but I really don't care. Nothing I've said is untrue.

erptastic

Ok, I don't know why you are so offended by me complaining about OnePlus's PR.
I am giving you that it is a nice phone, but not quite as phenomenal like when it came out. I don't need one (no pun intended), I am happy with my Note III/CM12.1 (although I dislike Sammy as a company, and YES that is a difference) and while the OnePlus has more horsepower, I am sure my Note3 blows it out of the water in terms of display, and it has the S-Pen (while that does not matter to many buying a Note, it matters for me a lot and I use it every single day). I got my Note III used, but in mint condition (Display had just been changed by Samsung, so it was practically a Refurb) for 300€ (320$). Now I know it is a bit of a stretch comparing a used phone to a new one, but that's definitely an option the potential buyer has. So while the One is still a good phone, its price is not as great as it once was.

And dammit, there IS a connection between the company and the phone. It's called brand image. That's why an Audi costs more than a VW despite the similar tech placed under the hood. And as even you (as a seemingly passionate OnePlus fan) point out, they fucked up from the start. Their only selling point for now is the good phone for a good price, but I guess that is not enough if (like they stated if I recall right) they want to sell their phones at "normal" prices to larger audiences at some point.

And the invite system - I am not an idiot, I know what they needed that for. One or two months after launch, OK. Apple has pre-order for that.
But keeping that up for almost a year is plain ridiculous (and no, it is no excuse they were quite easy to get in the end).
People (including me) wanted the phone when it was announced, and did not get the chance to buy it. So many said fuck it and turned to other options (see above).
And it is not really the "up and coming" company you want it to be. It's backed by Oppo, which is a fairly big player in the chinese market (if I recall right, they even have a lokal branch here in Germany). If they did not manage to produce enough phones three months after launch, that is quite a fail IMO.

Well, and I care about OnePlus's money not because I give a shit if they survive, but because I am interested in business (as a matter of fact, I am a business information systems student) and it is fun for me examining and discussing what they did right and wrong.
And they did not sell the phone that cheap because they are so friendly to their customers. They sell it that cheap because otherwise noone would give a crap about it and just go buy a Samsung or HTC as the One itself has nothing special (again, it is good, but at a similar price point there is no reason to prefer it over for example a Nexus). There were good chinese phones before and nobody gave a damn. The One itself was just a marketing campaign and if they ever get serious market share / attention, they will not sell their phones for that low.

Jonathan Lyng

I don't think they were sent directly from china, mine was sent from the UK, bought it from oneplus directly. it took 4 days to have it, I think it's like a lot of these chinese made phones (moto, iphone, xiaomi...) they get it first out of china and send t to local warehouses...
and it also took about 10 minutes to get the invite in jully 2014.

J.J.

I like to poke fun at the invite system too. But yes I own this phone as a back up and I actually put my note 4 down for a while to use this as my daily. Great phone!

Seems like you are. You keep repeating those words like a broken recorder. Sour grapes, much?

james fuston

Broken record. A recorder is like a flute, which I highly doubt would repeat itself if broken.

7-down

Right. Fixed :D

x

I hope OnePlus pays you, because otherwise you're just a fucking loser.

Sunny

Why are you so mad people don't like this?
I own a Oneplus One and it seriously is nothing special lmao

Vanick Ng

Going to be honest, If the OnePlus 2 is anything like the One, I'll wait for an invite and buy it. The OPO is quite the device for half the cost of any flagship.
AND I KNOW THE INVITE THING WAS LAME AND ANNOYING, but honestly, the phone is still top of the line. And the support it has is beyond extensive.

EDIT: support meaning ROMs and fun things

ProductFRED

They need to add LTE Bands 2 and 12 though (at least for the North American model). LTE Band 2 is useful for AT&T and T-Mobile users; AT&T uses it to supplement their aging and full Band 17 network, and T-Mobile is using it to turn on LTE in places outside of cities. Band 12 is super important for T-Mobile because it provides LTE signal that's as strong as AT&T and Verizon's.

Vanick Ng

glad this was mentioned. now i know to not switch to T-Mobile until i can confirm my next phone has this. :D Thanks!

Comment

I will never buy a Chinese brand phone.

Doakie

You might be retarded because every phone you've owned recently are all manufacturers in the same Chinese factories... Apple, Samsung, LG, Microsoft/Nokia, they all employ Chinese labor.

A brand doesn't change whether a phone is worthy of your elitist ownership. I own a OnePlus One and a BLU Studio Energy, both are Chinese phones and they're both excellent.

He said Chinese brand phones, not Chinese made.
ZTE, Hauwei, One plus, Lenovo, are Chinese brands.
Apple and BLU, while Chinese made are American brand.
HTC, is a tawainese brand. (Of I said that right)
Samsung, LG, are Korean brands.

AuroraFlux

Yeah, almost all the phones are 90% Chinese built to begin with, god forbid they go the extra 10% and be branded as a Chinese phone. Oh noes.

Phillip Jernigan

Except you don't buy phones saying they are Chinese brands.
you don't buy an iPhone and tell people it's a foxcon iPhone, you say it's an Apple iPhone.
You don't do the same with a SAMSUNG galaxy S5, or LG G3
Or HTC.

Are you retarded? Where a product is built has little to do with it's quality - which company actually builds it does. Apple designing a phone vs. some cheap Chinese company designing a phone equals a world of difference.

AuroraFlux

Yeah, just the "cheap Chinese company" that's backed by Oppo which is ridiculously large outside of the U.S.

OnePlus is not MicroMax. They aren't Hisense. They've got serious financial backing and if you have ever even held the OnePlus One you'd understand what "premium" feels like.

Whatever, I'm not a shareholder/own any stock in OnePlus, and if they survive or fail, I don't care. I don't hold allegiance to any companies. For the money, you can't get a 64GB unlocked phone with LTE and the same or better specs of the OPO for $350 anywhere else.

While the support may be atrocious, it seems unless you experience what it's like to buy one and use it for several months, you won't understand why this phone made the ripples that it did.

I'm not making a judgement either way about Oppo, I'm not the original commenter. My point was that you're being dense when you try to conflate the physical factory where a device's parts were put together with the company that designed and engineered the phone as though the two are remotely comparable in terms of their impact on the end-product.

Maybe they want to take the OK from Google like Cyanogen wants to take Android from them.

Random!

I'm currently living abroad and I want to buy an OPO before I go back home (I wanted the OP2 but ironically I'll have to "settle" with the OPO because the OP2 will break my deadline), but currently I have a N4 which is performing quite okay. So, I should ask: is it a good idea to buy it now, or should I wait a bit longer (up to 3 months) for eventual price drops as the launch date of the OP2 approaches?

TL;DR: should I expect price drops on the OPO in the next 3 months?

Flip Jumpman

No, the price shouldn't drop because the Two will be more expensive this time around.

Random!

Guess I'll order my OPO right away, then. Thanks! :D

ed

Will it? There has been nothing to suggest this.

AuroraFlux

Pei said it would be in his reddit AMA, but the margins are still going to be razor thin. It's going to be more expensive but still dramatically less than its competitors when it comes out (at least, that's how I understand it).

ed

I guess that explains the rumors about a less expensive one.

Flip Jumpman

If I remember correctly, it was mentioned in a Reddit AMA that the OnePlus Two would be more expensive.

Flip Jumpman

Front firing speakers 1+ Two! Are you listening... Keep going back to my Nexus 6 because the speakers and screen is much more enjoyable on it.

CasperTFG

"Those who currently have CyanogenMod 12S will..."

Cough...COS12...cough...

Vladimir

No one stops OTA to add a feature. It is most certainly stopped because of the terrible battery drain coming built-in with CM12s.

Fatal1ty_93_RUS

Preparing for PlusTwo launch eh?

Ørjan Laxaa

I hope the second generation device comes in two sizes. The One is really temping at that price, but I don't want a 5.5 inch phone.

I would be tempted to cave in and pick one up because I've wanted one since they were initially released but I feel like that $350 could go towards the new one that I'm presuming will be out within the next 6 months. Any OPO owners have an opinion on this? Also keep in mind that I already have a Moto X (2014) as a daily driver so it's not like I'm really strapped for a new phone in terms of just upgrading hardware.

It sounds weird, I understand that, but claiming it's somehow more "difficult" to say is the height of pedantry. Just admit you don't like it 'cause it sounds weird, don't try to pretend there's actually some kind of usability issue.

No need to admit anything, no matter if you look at it as a marketing specialist, press or casual user, that is a perfectly valid critique - you take something that already works fine, and you replace it with something obviously inferior just to push a brand name.

AuroraFlux

YOU think it's inferior. The world doesn't revolve around you. Your opinion is not fact.

There is nothing "obviously inferior" about it. Some people won't like saying OnePlus, and some people won't be bothered by it.

Ahmad El-Ibrahim

Hopefully, they make the hotword changeable. Doubt it, if OnePlus wants people to question what is OnePlus. Still, maybe.